The Hippocratic License: A new software license that prohibits uses that contravene the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Coraline Ada Ehmke's Hippocratic License is a software license that permits the broad swathe of activities enabled by traditional free/open licenses, with one exception it bars use by: "individuals, corporations, governments, or other groups for systems or activities that actively and knowingly endanger, harm, or otherwise threaten the physical, mental, economic, or general well-being of individuals or groups in violation of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights."

The Open Source Initiative maintains the canonical list of free/open licenses based on compliance with its Open Source Definition, which excludes licenses that ""discriminate against any person or group of persons" and that "restrict anyone from making use of the program in a specific field of endeavor." On this basis, OSI cofounder Bruce Perens says the Hippcratic License is not compatible with the OSD.

Ehmke calls the OSD "horribly dated" because it doesn't enable software developers to ensure that "our technology isn't used by fascists."

The OSD was developed in response to a proliferation of "open" licenses, many of which were open in name only, attempting to co-opt the word "open" without providing true openness (for example, Microsoft fielded a "shared source" license that permitted limited scrutiny of its sourcecode, but restricted the creation of new works based on that code).

Since the OSD's inception, the "field of endeavor" clause has given rise to controversy over attempts to expand the idea of "software freedom" into other human rights domains, including the right to be free from violence, harassment, exploitation, etc. The OSI has maintained that adjudicating whether a use qualifies for a field of endeavor prohibition was too legally intensive to make these licenses broadly useful, but Ehmke counters that the UN's Declaration has 70 years' worth of interpretive cases and scholarship that clears up this ambiguity. Read the rest